Schools seek further residency checks

Neil Vigdor, Staff Writer

Updated 10:47 pm, Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A steady magnet for students who don't live in Greenwich, the school district is exploring additional controls to check the residency of its pupils, including the prospect of a mandatory reverification of all rising sixth-graders.

The town currently requires all students entering kindergarten and ninth grade, as well as those new to the district, to verify their residency through a centralized system that was put in place four years ago and has gradually been ratcheted up.

Before that, it was up to individual schools to confirm the residency of the 9,000 students in the district.

With the recent turnover of half of the membership of the Board of Education, the issue of students from elsewhere getting a free ride on the backs of Greenwich taxpayers came up for discussion Tuesday night after the newcomers on the panel were sworn-in at Cos Cob School.

In some of her first official comments on the board, Republican newcomer Barbara O'Neill mentioned that she saw 24 New York license plates while campaigning at New Lebanon School in Byram one day this fall, as well as a student get dropped off by a taxi cab at the foot of the driveway there. The school is located on the border of Port Chester, N.Y.

"Maybe we need to look at license plates and see if the problem is really obvious and identifiable at New Leb," said O'Neill, the former longtime coordinator of the district's Advanced Learning Program.

O'Neill's comments set in motion an extended dialogue between board members and school administrators on the district's efforts to ensure that students are bona fide residents.

"Do we feel that central residency verification is working well?" said Steven Anderson, the board's Republican chairman.

Interim Schools Superintendent Roger Lulow, who returned to Greenwich in August to lead the district through what will be a transition year after the resignation of Sidney Freund, acknowledged there is no iron-clad solution to the problem.

"I would say that this is an issue that was here 15 years ago," Lulow said. "It's going to be here forever unless the border changes."

Lulow said that he is engaged in the process of weeding out ineligible students.

"I know of a number that have happened this year where we've verified licenses and some of them have even gotten to me," Lulow said.

The district previously paid a private investigator on an hourly basis to verify the residency of students.

Those duties are now handled by a full-time employee under the supervision of Tom Bobkowski, the district's security director, who also vets student information himself.

School officials estimated that they currently spend about $100,000 annually on the verification process.

In addition to the centralized controls put in place by the town, the district also checks students' residency on a case-by-case basis if it gets a tip or complaint.

"Every year we have the police department run those license plates," said John Curtin, special projects manager for the district. "When we identify someone who is illegally in the school system, we remove them."

The district uses a software program called VeriMove to help detect if a student has moved outside Greenwich, according to Curtin, who said there is usually a one to two-month lag when an address change shows up in the system.

Curtin said that most of the individual cases that are investigated result in students being ruled eligible to attend school in Greenwich.

"Most of them, there's an explanation for them," Curtin said.

Proof of residency accepted by the district includes a driver's license or passport, a document establishing ownership or rental (tax bill, mortgage statement, deed or lease/rental agreement signed by the landlord with their phone number), and two utility bills.

Anderson wondered if the district would be wise to review all students who live in rental units, however.

Democrat Adriana Ospina, a newcomer to the board who was born in Colombia, cautioned that the district should proceed with caution in its screening of the student population.

"I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but I would be very careful if we isolate a particular group," Ospina said.

The board asked school administrators how much it would cost to perform an additional check of students' residency.

That information is expected to be available when the board holds its next work session at 7 p.m. Thursday in the district's Havemeyer Building headquarters.

Anderson said it's his initial understanding that there would be no additional cost to do one more check, one that he contends would make the most sense if it was conducted when students enter middle school in the sixth grade.

In a follow-up interview with Greenwich Time, Anderson said that even his own twins had to show proof of residency when they entered the ninth grade.

"Nobody gets a break," Anderson said. "Everybody has to do it."

The school board is scheduled Thursday night to resume its election of officers, which was suspended Tuesday after the board's Republican and Democratic caucuses couldn't agree on what constitutes a majority vote.

While town Attorney John Wayne Fox rendered an opinion that five votes are required to become chairman under the board's bylaws, Moriarty's Democratic backers requested a second legal opinion in time for Thursday's meeting.

The GOP-controlled Board of Selectmen would decide the chairmanship if neither candidate is able to muster a majority or the vote winds up a tie, according to Anderson.

Staff writer Neil Vigdor can be reached at neil.vigdor@scni.com or at 203-625-4436.